The rapid modernization that accompanied the second phase of industrialization in America at the beginning of this century brought with it profound economic changes. These in turn led to the development of an ideology of home and family as a haven from an external world in which the individual felt increasingly crushed and depersonalized. Home was seen as the place where traditional values were preserved, and as a refuge from the pressures of a threatening public sphere. Many writers ¹ interpret this ideology as indicating the beginning of a divide between home and society and between public and private. Since the public and private worlds, according to this view, developed along separate but parallel lines, the role of women has often only been analysed in relation to the private sphere. This has meant that the links between women’s public and private identities have been neglected, as well as the ways in which her traditional privacy actually represented an interaction with the public sphere.